Urban Floods and Climate Change Adaptation: the Potential of Public Space Design When Accommodating Natural Processes
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
water Article Urban Floods and Climate Change Adaptation: The Potential of Public Space Design When Accommodating Natural Processes Maria Matos Silva * ID and João Pedro Costa CIAUD, Centro de Investigação em Arquitetura, Urbanismo e Design, Faculdade de Arquitetura, Universidade de Lisboa, Rua Sá Nogueira, Pólo Universitário do Alto da Ajuda, 1349-063 Lisboa, Portugal; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +351-21-361-5884 Received: 28 December 2017; Accepted: 7 February 2018; Published: 9 February 2018 Abstract: Urban public space is extraordinarily adaptable under a pattern of relatively stable changes. However, when facing unprecedented and potentially extreme climatic changes, public spaces may not have the same adaptation capacity. In this context, planned adaptation gains strength against “business as usual”. While public spaces are among the most vulnerable areas to climatic hazards, they entail relevant characteristics for adaptation efforts. As such, public space design can lead to effective adaptation undertakings, explicitly influencing urban design practices as we know them. Amongst its different intrinsic roles and benefits, such as being a civic common gathering place of social and economic exchanges, public space may have found an enhanced protagonism under the climate change adaptation perspective. In light of the conducted empirical analysis, which gathered existing examples of public spaces with flood adaptation purposes, specific public space potentialities for the application of flood adaptation measures are here identified and characterized. Overall, this research questions the specific social potentiality of public space adaptation in the processes of vulnerability tackling, namely considering the need of alternatives in current flood management practices. Through literature review and case study analysis, it is here argued that: people and communities can be perceived as more than susceptible targets and rather be professed as active agents in the process of managing urban vulnerability; that climate change literacy, through the design of a public space, may endorse an increased common need for action and the pursuit of suitable solutions; and that local know-how and locally-driven design can be considered as a service with added value for adaptation endeavors. Keywords: urban floods; climate change; adaptation; interdisciplinarity; public space 1. Introduction The idea of public space may be apprehended by a set of two meanings: (1) a conceptual meaning commonly used in political and social science, in which public space, “brings together all the processes that configure the opinion and collective will” as characterized by Innerarity, ([1] p. 10) (author’s translation) and (2) a physical meaning, commonly used in urban planning and design, regarding where and how previous actions are developed [2,3]. More specifically, a space that enables and promotes community life, such as streets, sidewalks, plazas, coffee shops, parks or museums, and that potentially offers services with wide-ranging benefits with tangible and intangible values. Other authors have additionally highlighted pubic space as multidimensional space, with a central social, political and cultural significance [4]. In regards to its physical characteristics, it has been particularly argued on the long-lasting permanence of public space as a structuring urban space [5,6] of interdisciplinary nature [7,8]. Overall, public space may be defined by Hanna Arendt’s communal table: it “gathers us together and yet prevents our falling over each other, so to speak.” ([9], p. 52). Water 2018, 10, 180; doi:10.3390/w10020180 www.mdpi.com/journal/water Water 2018, 10, 180 2 of 24 In the present article, all these previously mentioned facets of public space are embraced and its specific role in urban adaptation processes is furthermore discussed, namely by arguing that through the application of effective measures in public spaces, communities are facilitated to comprehend, learn, engage and mobilize for climate action. As highlighted in previous publications [10,11], the distinctiveness of urban territories as major centers of communication, commerce, culture and innovation may empower successful processes and outcomes in the climate change adaptation agenda, due to “interchange processes of products, services and ideas that are processed and expressed in their public spaces” ([2], p. 120, author’s translation). As Jane Jacobs pointed out, in a pioneering critical criticism on modern urbanism orthodoxy that quickly became mainstream faith, “lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs, outside themselves” ([12], p. 448). What is regularly overlooked in large scale planning and policy—often guided by questionable interests—is a community’s inherent resilience. Not only do people want to be the main actors in the urban space, but also want to be at the center of space design concerns. The currently ongoing project “PSSS—Public Space Service System” [13] acknowledges this recognition of public space potential roles, and is working on new critical concepts for public space assessment, with new criteria within a systemic logic focusing on service and value creation, which is useful for actions calling for urban adaptability. Concerning the recurrent phenomenon of urban flooding, climate change research has been warning to the fact that traditional flood management practices must be reassessed, namely if projected impacts are to be managed, such as the likely increased frequency and greater intensity of storms (precipitation and storm surges) together with a rise in sea level. This is an increasing threat that affects all the people in a community, particularly the most vulnerable (elderly, children, poor, among others). Indeed, it is possible to verify an emerging change from the conventional focus on reducing the probability to experience floods to the aim to reduce society’s vulnerabilities. This former notion inevitably promoted the emergence of new flood management approaches that started to integrate risk and uncertainty in its practice, notably by fully acknowledging and welcoming the processes of the natural water cycle. Among others, Best Management Practices (BMPs), Green Infrastructure (GI), Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM), Low Impact Development (LID) or Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) [14] are well representative of these new approaches. All of which implies changes in the relationship between the city and (its) water. Considering public space as a communal space system that develops spatial services [15], as a collective entity of shared concerns, a new claim for climate change adaptation is presented: the claim that public space may additionally serve as a social beacon for change. In light with Pelling’s findings, people and communities are not only targets but also active agents in the management of vulnerability [16]. Ulrich Beck also highlighted that “what was made by people can also be changed by people” ([17], p. 157). Correspondingly, not only it is in the public space where hazards become tangible to a community, but it may also be where adaptation initiatives may strive. It therefore comes as no surprise that a new variety of insurgent citizenship is arising within public spaces as the urgent matter of climate change adaptation is recognized among our societies. Regardless, bearing in mind the potential severity of the projected impacts that are expected to become increasingly more unavoidable, many authors agree that our society is still not responding accordingly [18]. Some societies have shown to be reluctant of the need to face impending threats of climate change due to an absence of common understanding of what is the “common good”. Hesitant communities may be driven by the fact that climate change is still a much-politicized issue or by the fact that adaptation is still a fairly recent strategy of response. Regardless of the causes in climate change suspicions, some cases provide evidence of an inclination to prioritize other values. Even within developed countries that have suffered direct consequences of severe climate impacts, some communities, such as the case of New Orleans local society [19], have rejected initiatives towards a more adapted urban environment. Other communities, in other situations, also did not initially Water 2018, 10, 180 3 of 24 welcome adaptation actions. This is namely the case of the first attempt to implement the currently internationally recognized concept of the Water Plaza, which can be briefly characterized by being a low-lying square that is submerged only during storm events. Despite a promising start—with an idea that had won the first prize of the 2005 Rotterdam Biennale competition—the first pilot project failed. Risks, such as of children drowning, triggered strong emotional reactions from local citizens who started naming the idea as the “drowning plaza” ([20], pp. 121–122). Having wisely learned from the encountered barriers that prevented the implementation of the first project, the second pilot project had not only a new location, but, more importantly, a new approach towards technical criteria and social participation and is currently considered an exemplary case of concrete climate change adaptation in a highly urbanized area. Cases like these evidence that social, cultural and emotional factors can be more valued and respected than the need of physical safety or